Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

from "The Song of Wandering Aengus" by William Butler Yeats, 1897

~~☆~~

Abbingdon Manor, near Guildford, Surrey

When Uncle Conrad arrived I was in the back garden trying to bury Winston again.

Though the poor dear hadn't been the most mobile when alive, undead Winston leapt and capered after me like a gymnast. As I dodged between yew trees to put off having to thwack darling ex-Winston with my spade, I pondered on what was more repulsive: the ribbons of stinking flesh hanging off Winston's bones, or his new-found septuagenarian agility.

"Bloody hell!" Uncle Conrad cowered at the gate, his bulging eyeballs darting between his Landrover and my re-animated butler, who was now ricocheting off the gravestones of our little family cemetery like he was in a haunted pinball machine. "Lara! What's happened to Winston?"

Winston lumbered after me, hurdling gravestones like an Olympian whilst chanting "Cup of tea, my Lady?" with what was left of his maggot-chewed lips.

"Distract him, Uncle! I'll stake him!"

Uncle Conrad's anvil of a jaw worked. Probably mustering the collective courage of his ancestors to stop himself from driving back to Oxford and leaving his only niece to be eaten by her zombie housekeeping staff. Then, with a cry of "Crouch! Bind! Set!" Uncle Conrad bent his knees, tucked his duffel bag under his armpit, and lunged towards Winston.

"Darjeeling!" came a gurgle from somewhere inside Winston's gaping chest cavity. He sprang towards Uncle Conrad, his worm-eaten jaw clacking like the world's most inappropriate castanets.

"Uncle! Get Winston into the ha-ha and I'll stake him through the heart!" I set the spade handle at the edge of Dad's gravestone and jumped onto its unsupported middle. The handle snapped like a twig, leaving two splintered stakes that looked simply perfect for javelining into a zombie butler.

Winston wasn't cooperating; the poor chap didn't seem to like the idea of waiting patiently in the ha-ha to be staked, preferring instead to chase a wailing Uncle Conrad through the rose garden. I lobbed one of my makeshift stakes at his retreating back. Unfortunately, I hadn't accounted properly for the whacking great steel spade on its tip. It ended up boomeranging into the fountain, knocking the arm clean off a stone cherub. Good job Dad wasn't around to see that.

I gave chase, weaving between budding rose bushes until I almost fell on Uncle Conrad spreadeagled on the cobbles with dear old ex-Winston's withered fingers around his neck.

"Cup of teeeee," groaned Winston, despite an almost certain lack of vocal cords.

"So sorry, old fruit." I plunged the spade handle into where Winston's heart used to be, screaming to drown out the sickly crunch of tearing flesh and snapping sinew. Winston's back arched, his re-animated musculature straining against the stake. Then, his body flopped. Wizened bones clattered against the cobbles. "Darling Winston. I'll find out who did this to you, I promise. And I'll make them pay."

"For God's sake, Lara." Uncle Conrad sat up, his body rocking with shivers. "What the bloody hell is going on?"

A year after freeing me from his sanctimonious droning, why on Earth had Uncle Conrad suddenly turned up unannounced, and at simply the most embarrassing time imaginable? Without a butler, alive or otherwise, I supposed that I ought to act somewhat hospitable. "Cup of tea, Uncle?"

We re-buried Winston as best we could next to Dad, and trudged indoors for a miserable lunch. I usually prided myself on my stiff upper lip, but no sooner had I slammed the microwave door on my heat-and-eat jalfrezi than a flurry of hot tears hijacked me.

"It's all right, darling. He's at peace now." Uncle Conrad dragged me snivelling into the oily warmth of his Fair Isle jumper. "Why did Winston... pop in to say hello... after being buried for a month?"

I pawed at my salty cheeks. "I don't know."

The shrill ping of the microwave made me jump. Uncle Conrad steered me to the kitchen table and pressed me into a chair. "Have you upset anyone during one of your blasted escapades? Anyone who might have sought revenge on you by... pepping up our Winston?"

Wracking my brain didn't bring anything up. I hadn't upset anyone. At least nobody with demonic agencies at their bidding. Apart from the usual smugglers, international criminal organisations, a few governments. Perhaps the odd archaeology aficionado with more money than sense, and regular access to a warlock. If I were being brutally honest, I'd made so many enemies that any one of them could have weaponised Winston to kill me.

Instead, I offered Uncle Conrad a guilty smile. "No, Uncle. I never upset people."

"No more expeditions, Lara! And this house is a bloody pigsty! And you'll get ill if you eat this microwaveable rubbish." He gestured at his biryani-in-a-box before shoving another spoonful into his maw.

I waved my limp naan at him. "It's fine! It's from Marks and Spencers!"

Uncle Conrad placed his spoon ever so carefully onto the table. "Re-animated corpse notwithstanding, Winston's been gone a month. I know he was like family but... you need to pull yourself together."

"I know." I picked at my naan, tears threatening to make another impromptu appearance. "I think I need to keep busy. I haven't worked since Winston got ill. Need to get back into the swing of things."

"That's the problem, Lara. You're obsessed with your work. And it's too bloody dangerous."

"Well, then I'll just spend a few months on someone else's dig. Anything interesting in J.A.R this month? Can I help on one of your digs?"

He winced into his rice. "No tomb raiders allowed on my digs since what happened last time."

"You always donate your finds to the blasted Ashmolean when you could make a killing, Uncle. And you'd find twice as many artefacts with me helping you."

"I don't need the money. And I don't need to be hounded by Saxon warrior ghosts accusing me of desecrating their king's ship burial again."

A chuckle escaped me. "That dig was jolly good fun, though."

"The team are still talking about you five years later." Uncle Conrad ruffled my hair. His fingers got caught in the knotted tresses. I yelped as he took rather too long extricating them from my matted bird's-nest of hair. I probably ought to have brushed it at some point in the past month.

"Sorry, Uncle. Winston hasn't been around to remind me about stuff."

"Stuff like bathing and brushing your hair? Ladies like you shouldn't be relying on butlers in this day and age anyway."

Perhaps he was right; standards had slipped a little since I'd lost Winston. I needed to be more resourceful. But Uncle Conrad would never understand what Winston had been to me. In Uncle's eyes I'd just lost an elderly butler, when in fact I'd lost my communications and operations manager. What cut the deepest was that I'd lost my best — and let's face it, only — friend.

"Get out of Abbingdon for a bit now that Winston's passed. A nice relaxing change of scene will do you good."

I raised an eyebrow. "I thought you didn't want me to help on your next dig."

"I don't." Uncle Conrad slid his tablet out of his duffel bag and began to swipe through the pages of The Journal of Archaeological Research with swift strokes. "A Silicon Valley tech company is looking to expand its portfolio of historical art as part of its cultural museum, and has sponsored some digs for Minoan artefacts. They're also willing to pay a lot for existing collections."

Jalfrezi forgotten, my ears pricked up. "Any risks of being attacked by smugglers?"

"All their digs are in Greece, Lara. So, no."

"Any gorges or ravines to cross?"

Uncle Conrad rubbed his chin. "I tripped over a loose paving stone in Heraklion once. Bloody nightmare. My toenail's never been the same since."

I dashed my spoon into my curry with a splat. "It all sounds so bloody boring, Uncle."

"That's the point! You're recovering from bereavement. It's meant to be boring."

"Which tech company wants to make a museum anyway?"

"Natla Technologies. A software company. I've never heard of them."

"Minoan pottery is so easy to come by; most museums have tons of it." I jerked my thumb at the cellar door. "The cellar's full of Minoan stuff from Mum's digs in Santorini if these Natla Technologies chaps want that. In fact, why would they spend so much money on excavating new Minoan sites if the antiquities market is already up to its armpits in Minoan artefacts? Natla don't seem to be the sharpest tools in the box. Still, I suppose I could do with the money."

"Why do you even need money, Lara?" Uncle Conrad swept an arm around the charmingly decaying kitchen. "It's not like you're renovating Abbingdon, and Winston's keep was hardly anything. And I paid your bail last time you got arrested for disturbing the peace. And I've bribed so many bloody journalists from The Times to keep quiet about your antics that I've got them all on speed-dial. If anything I'm the one who should be signing up for this Minoan dig."

"I need the money for... you know... the big expedition. The Holy Grail of archaeology might be round the corner. I mean, not the literal Holy Grail. I'm not into pottery. I'm saving money for... that once-in-a-lifetime expedition."

"Another expedition to the Himalayas?" Uncle Conrad puffed out an exasperated breath. "She's gone, Lara. There's no way she could have survived. You have to move on."

Each word cut into my heart, making me squirm on my chair. "Mum might be out there, missing home."

Dad had sent countless search parties. None of them had recovered a body. Perhaps Uncle Conrad was right, and there was no point clinging onto stupid hope. But, now that Dad was gone, wasn't it my duty to keep searching? To keep hoping? I owed it to Mum.

"You're so much like her, Lara. It scares me sometimes. You look like her. Your voice is just like hers. You're stubborn like her. You could be a brilliant academic like she was. Finish your PhD. Get an archaeology fellowship at Oxford. You could rent one of my flats. Get yourself a nice quiet girlfriend. A librarian, or a research assistant."

"I'm not a fan of ivory towers."

Uncle Conrad sneered into his biriyani. "We all know who used to say that."

And there it was. He'd managed a full hour without mentioning it, and I'd stupidly thought that his sudden appearance after a year had been an attempt at an apology. Clearly not.

"I think you'd better go, Uncle."

"Your father always belittled Milly's academic work. She was the real archaeologist. Just because he had a title, why should his projects have come first? Swanning around with a kukri in his belt, fighting indigenous peoples for artefacts that he sold to the highest bidder, for what?"

"He never did that! And what happened to Mum wasn't Dad's fault."

"My sister was all I had in the whole world. And he dragged her on his escapades and—"

"Ugh." I stood up so quickly that my chair upended and shot across the flagstones behind me with a screech. "This is why I stopped ringing you."

Uncle Conrad rubbed a palm across tired eyes. "I'm sorry, Lara."

"I just lost Winston, and you turn up and... make everything hurt more, as usual." I slid a hand into Uncle Conrad's duffel bag and groped around for his tablet, taking a screenshot of the J.A.R article that flashed onto the screen.

"What are you doing?"

"Firstly, I'm going to find out who's trying to kill me. Secondly, I'm going to Greece to dig up Minoan artefacts for Natla Technologies and their daft museum."

The scrape of sharpened bone on glass screeched in my ears. Uncle Conrad and I turned in unison to the kitchen window. Bony fingers scratched at the pane, followed by a dull rapping and a guttural call of "Cup of tea, my Lady?"

I kicked my chair away, plucked a meat cleaver from the aga and made for the door. "But first, I'm going to decapitate my butler."

--------------------

Author's Notes:

Crouch, bind, set - the referee calls this to rugby players so that they engage and push forward slowly into a scrum without getting injured.

Darjeeling - fragrant greenish black tea from the town of Darjeeling in India, and one of the most popular teas in the UK. And yes, there will be a lot of tea-drinking in this story.

Marks and Spencer's - famously expensive UK department store and supermarket.

Ashmolean - the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, a famous art and archaeology museum with a really good collection of Greek and Roman archaeological items, statues and bronzes.

Aga - a kerosene-burning oven and stove that is popular in large rural manor houses in UK. They are becoming phased out because of their high kerosene consumption (and because they are rubbish).

The banner art for this chapter is from the "Shadow of the Tomb Raider" video game box cover, with artwork by Martin Dubeau. There are various art books available that feature the conceptual artwork from the development stages of the Tomb Raider games - worth buying it if you are a Lara fan.

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